


Every Creeping Thing After His Kind

by TruckThat



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: M/M, Musings On Free Will and Inadequacy Of Course, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Second Time, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-23
Updated: 2019-11-23
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:35:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21529903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TruckThat/pseuds/TruckThat
Summary: Crowley does most things with Aziraphale, now that there's really no reason not to. Most things include: wiling, thwarting, drinking sherry, drinking drinks that are not sherry, feeling really rather unsteady about things in general, and for the past seven or so years at least, not talking about one thing in particular which. Did happen. Once. And the Hell of it was, neither of them were even drunk for it.Crowley sinks. And is saved. Almost every definition of drowning, really, presented by sevens and twos.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 48





	Every Creeping Thing After His Kind

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I set out to write porn. I have, of course, as is customary, written what is mostly an allegory instead. Rated M for some not-that-explicit spicy stuff that snuck in there anyway.

“Crowley.” Aziraphale's fingers wrap around his wrist. Kindly, respectfully. Chilly, usually, but under Crowley's skin it burns hot-cold like a sick fever, to be touched by him. It bubbles up all sorts of terrible memories. Things best-not-thought-of, but then Crowley has always struggled with 'best;' it's more of an angelic specialty. Doesn't it bother Aziraphale, also, to touch him? It must crawl like snakeflesh, surely. There's a certain blessing or a certain curse in being what they are—in all things being as they are, of course. But for a Host thing, an existential sort of occult sort of thing, one of the _things_ is just this: being able to sense things as they _are_.

Aziraphale is the burning brand of heaven, death and anathema (hah) to any such as Crowley might be. And Crowley is, of course, The Snake.

The Snake who's chewing at his cuticles, currently, which admittedly is a quirk of anatomy that not all snakes can claim. Fine, so he's a very _special_ snake.

"Crowley," Aziraphale says again, now tugging a little, a warning this time, "you'll nick yourself with those."

"Hmm?"

"Fangs, dear. If not for your own sake, think of what the other parents will be thinking."

It's Adam's A-Levels completion ceremony, which feels like some kind of American—something—leaching across the pond because surely this hasn't always been the done thing. Maybe it's the fault of all those syndicated television programmes. Crowley can't _remember_ it being the done thing, to invite all of your... everyone, with a stage to walk across and a presentation of little scrolls and all. Perhaps he's just never had reason to consider. Crowley stops gnawing his cuticles. The _other_ parents, right. Aziraphale's hand is still on his wrist, pulling gently but firmly, to rest it safely on Crowley's knee. Where he can't, Herself and all the rest forbid, embarrass anyone by accidentally showing a flash of his _teeth_ , out when they shouldn't be. Crowley wonders, for the first time ever in a round half-dozen millennia, whether ineffable beings can get the 'flu. Maybe that's what he's feeling.

Woozy. _Bad_. That's a more quantified list of what Crowley is feeling, just in general. Well, they're drinking, so it's probably not influenza or if it is, it's definitely being made worse by the sherry. Crowley has cocked it up once again. He's let Aziraphale order the drinks when the angel was obviously in one of his frivolous moods.

"Sherry. Honestly, _sherry_?" Crowley complains, long after the fact, sloshing more into his glass from what is not their first bottle.

"Well. Well, what's wrong with sherry? I happen to like it, and it's been ages."

"It's been ages, angel, because no one has actually used sherry for anything except making a trifle since... oh, I'd say 1889. Roughly."

"Crowley," Aziraphale says with a tone of incredible judgment considering that _he is the one who's ordered all the sherry,_ "are you _drunk?_ "

Yes. Crowley is drunk. "Not _very_ drunk."

"Hm. You know, earlier, I was thinking... are your, you know, your fangs. Are they poisonous? If you were to bite?"

"Aziraphale, are _you_ drunk?"

Aziraphale _is_ very drunk, because he _hugs_ Crowley when they say goodnight. Claps him on the shoulder like a good old boy. And he is, is Aziraphale; he's the best by his very essential definition, and Crowley has finished off that bottle of sherry from earlier and then moved on to dry martinis because he absolutely couldn't stand it any longer because—because he almost leans in and tells Aziraphale so. Pathetic. _Sloshed_ , Aziraphale would say, if he wasn't also swaying.

Fatal mistake narrowly avoided, Crowley actually walks the whole way home, wretched, to his wretched flat. Keels over unsteadily in his lounger. Goes to sleep with a headache knowing he'll wake up with a worse one.

Well it is always worse, isn't it? That's the saying? Or it _could_ always be worse. Not a very good saying, if that's it: it could only always be worse until it _is_. Then it's... it's just really very bad.

Sober, Crowley can recall that the saying is actually _well, at least it isn't raining_ , only Crowley's not so sure that a little rain would have mattered, at the point where things have found themselves. Anathema was at the convocation thing. More accurately, the convocation thing was Anathema’s fault. Both in that she'd rung Aziraphale up and invited him—and through him extended the invitation to Crowley, _naturally_ , Aziraphale had said, as if where one of them went the other followed—and also in that Crowley suspected she'd tutored Adam in maths. Most likely she’d done it against the boy’s will, and therefore she was probably directly responsible for him scraping a pass even in the boring subjects. He's always delighted to see Anathema, that's not the issue. Lovely girl, excellent fashion sense; really ought to spring for a new bicycle or perhaps a nice, sturdy used Toyota, especially with a second baby on the way.

Crowley makes a mental note to inspect his finances later for possible loopholes that might allow him to afford a nice, sturdy _new_ Toyota as a baby shower gift or something while also making it appear to be anyone's idea but his own.

Anyhow. Multiplication of the flock or whatever aside.

Anathema’s followed one uncomfortably social invitation with another and asked them round for tea. And she definitely meant _both_ of them this time, because Crowley was unfortunately there and she'd looked at Crowley too when she'd said it. So obviously here was one person, at least, who didn't hold a bit of fang against a distinguished gentleman. There's no reason she shouldn't have invited them both, of course. All things being fair. Crowley does most things with Aziraphale, now that there's really no reason not to.

Most things include: wiling, thwarting, drinking sherry, drinking drinks that are not sherry, feeling really rather unsteady about things in general, and for the past seven or so years at least, not talking about one thing in particular which. Did happen. Once. And the Hell of it was, neither of them were even drunk for it. Which means Crowley doesn't even have the luxury of pretending he can't remember. (He would of course remember if they'd done it drunk, too, but one might at least have had the dignity of a plausible fiction. Alas.) _Anomalous_. That's what Aziraphale had called the whole thing, afterwards. There aren't especially words for what Crowley would have liked to have called the situation. If they were talking about it, which they have not been, and very successfully if he does say so himself.

So it's not as though Crowley wouldn't have _gone_ with Aziraphale, either way. Only now he feels peculiarly obligated, and peculiarly like he would rather _not_ feel that way.

Because Aziraphale is not—himself, when he's with Crowley, just of late. Or rather he's exactly as expected. Protecting the parents and uncles and extended relatives of the Tadfield United Secondary convocating class from any accidental brushes with the occult in a way that is both stern and forgiving. Shaking hands with the _other parents_ with good wishes for their offspring's futures that actually manifest into deed. Blessing the little people, and their wives, and their sons' wives. Except for when he's drunk, when he can't very well pretend to be anything but what he is, which is entirely Aziraphale.

And no one's watching. He's just _doing it_ , all those things that angels are expected to do, unprompted and unaided.

And Crowley… misses him. Misses him while he's right there. And so perhaps this explains why they've been drinking more, recently. Why Crowley's been suggesting it after things like a _graduation ceremony,_ of all idiotic things, for a bunch of mortals. Fleeting little dirt-eating lives, and he's just had to watch Aziraphale care about them like caring about them is all he's good for. And it's possible that _that_ explains why Crowley feels, still and ongoingly, like he might be coming down with some incurable disease. Overindulgence. He hadn't thought it could happen to a demon but, well, here he was. Here he was, trying to decide whether it might be more or less believable to phone Aziraphale and tell him that he was feeling a bit peaky and couldn't give him a lift. Or whether Aziraphale might not be somewhat relieved if Crowley just... didn't show up. He could just let the angel make his own way there. Unfortunately, this question occupies him for so long that it's past time to leave and he has to drive like, well, like the very devil, to pick Aziraphale up in time.

They get tea with Anathema—just Anathema; Newton has taken the little one out for some air or somesuch, whatever one does with a very small person when one doesn't wish it to be underfoot. At first she smiles at them both welcomingly, and then she smiles at them both a bit worriedly, and by the end of it Aziraphale has offered three times to be a godfather to the newest offspring (but probably with a capital G, given the circumstances) and Anathema has clasped Crowley on the shoulder and given him the kind of smile that is almost an offer of someone to talk to, any time, should he need it. She gives one of those to Aziraphale, too, _separately._ The whole ordeal is horrible, although her scones are excellent as always.

“Dear,” Aziraphale starts, touching him at the shoulder, as Crowley pulls out of the drive. Crowley bites his head off just for that, and the rest of the afternoon isn't worth talking about.

Aziraphale still calls him up the next day, to ask his advice on eBay, of all things. Crowley didn't even know that eBay was _still there_. Heaven and Hell somehow both fail to intervene, although this turn of events is surely acceptable by neither standard.

They go for lunch like always. Nowhere fancy; just out to a little sandwich bar they both happen to like. Like two old colleagues who several years ago beat back an apocalypse in a good old-fashioned team-up and now go to social events together and who never once, and _only_ once, kissed like the world that hadn't ended might burn itself out all over again. Never peeled each other bare and then peeled each other down to the very soul and built each other back out of the ether itself like two opposing magnets dragging iron filings across a page into some fantastic shape and then. Then—stopped when Crowley did.

Never re-started. Started _blessing people_ , left and right.

"Aziraphale," Crowley finally finishes, sets down his knife, "I want to do it _again_." There's anguish in it that he can't disguise, a choke in the words that won't be hidden. It doesn't matter, he tells himself, as he has been telling himself all along. Nothing on Earth is permanent, and nothing so changeable can possibly matter. Not in the grand scope, the scope where two such beings exist on an immaterial plane. This he has told himself, too. Except for the way that Aziraphale turns to look at him and it matters very much, it does.

"It's all right," Crowley goes on, not, it turns out, finished. "It's all right, it is; this too shall pass and all that. You shall not pass? No, that's Gandalf, sorry, I was right the first time. It's all right, I know you've decided you can't, only. I thought you should know. Thought you deserved to."

"Deserved?" Aziraphale has never been much of one to talk about _deserving_. Odd quality in an angel, actually, now that Crowley is thinking about it. He lays a staying hand across Crowley’s wrist. "Darling."

"The thing is, though. That I just wish you... wouldn't do that. Call me that. When we've tried it out and we couldn't—keep. Anyway. Anyway, or just, just give me a few thousand years, just 'til it _is_ all right, and then you can do what you like with me, see?"

"But not now?" Aziraphale is staring at Crowley now like if he stares hard enough, he'll be able to read something else in him, some meaning other than the plain, clear page of Crowley's heart torn out for him to squint at. He's still touching Crowley just a little while he does it. But he's always been able to read Crowley with a look, is the thing. The other thing. There's a lot of things, all infinite in their creation.

"Angel. I."

There was something else, one _more_ thing left unsaid and choked on, but Crowley keeps on choking and he doesn't get it out. Not in time.

Actually a great many things don't happen in time. This is a bit unusual, given that Crowley has always, until just recently, felt that he had quite a bit of time to spare. Mainly, seven years too late: Aziraphale reaches across the melamine tabletop, takes Crowley's face in both his hands, and kisses him.

It burns like a benediction. Whatever temperature Aziraphale runs at is the wrong one and Crowley can feel something snap clean in half with it like shocked glass under boiling water. It is not, Crowley does not think, a brotherly sort of kiss. Nor is it a blessing sort.

And that's _all_ he thinks about it before he stands, clatter of the chair as it falls to the tile behind him, and disappears.

Aziraphale doesn't call him to ask him about eBay or about anything else _this_ time.

The reason for this is that instead, Aziraphale turns up on his doorstep two nights later, midnight, all very dramatic. It's raining like the weather itself intends to wash everything off the face of the earth. Every thing that creepeth. And it's probably not even God's idea this time, really. It's freezing cold in the middle of June just because that’s the kind of June it is, and the angel is shivering, soaked. Crowley has not, it must be said, been well.

Aziraphale could have looked better himself, but then again it has never made a difference one way or another what he looked like. Dripping woollen scarf in Crowley's front hall or tuxedo and spats on the Titanic. In danger of drowning either way. Crowley would have—Crowley could have—Crowley would have done anything, would have taken him any way at all, any way he could get him, but pity and regret he cannot stand.

"Crowley," Aziraphale starts, one more time, the last time Crowley can allow, and although it _hurts him_ , Crowley goes to him this time, too.

There's really no question of Crowley not wanting to go to him. The want for it is aching in his bones; it's the fever that he's been starving out for decades. Or. Well, what's a year or two or two thousand. He clutches Aziraphale by the sodden scarf, not to throttle him, although he could and the angel would just. Would just stand there for it like a great innocent idiot, probably, and that was the trouble. He would let Crowley _ruin_ himself on him, placidly, full with the love and the balance of all things, and he'd kiss Crowley back like a brother or like a lover, however Crowley most preferred, because he does, in fact, love Crowley. As he loves all things, even the least of all things. And somewhere in there, that list must include Crowley. Includes him enough to touch him, sometimes. One time. And now, Crowley supposes, one more time again. So Crowley unwinds the scarf instead, lets it splotch to the hardwood. Buries his face in Aziraphale's equally sodden shoulder-pad.

 _Shoulder-pad_. In the Year of Our Lord... whatever year it is. Doesn't matter. He despairs. Aziraphale holds him up solidly, damn him anyway.

"What the fuck are you doing." Crowley doesn't even have the energy to punctuate it with curiosity; he does not care to know the answer. Knows the answer already, whatever, same thing. An afterthought: "And why are you doing it to _me_."

"Because," Aziraphale says, "sorry, because I've just realized we’ve botched it up horrifically."

"Oh, just now, eh?" Sarcasm, on the other hand, can be generated on not much energy at all. Even just on the amount it takes to mumble into someone's wet overcoat. "Right this minute?"

"Let me take my coat off, Crowley," Aziraphale says with an incredible reasonableness. Without answering at all. Well, but it wasn't a question, right?

"By all means." He peels off. There's no way Aziraphale could have known it was the last time Crowley would let himself lean in. Crowley hadn't _said_ , had he. He's never, ever _said_. "You can come in, of course. But. Don't. Just. Please don't stay?" This last, horribly, _horrifically_ , Crowley cannot pretend even to himself is anything but the question it has been.

"Yes, that's just the problem, isn't it? You keep asking me not to."

"I'm a demon; we never fucking _ask_."

"That also seems to be the problem. Although I'll admit the syntax of it is confusing when it's put like that." Aziraphale unbuttons busily; brisk in word and in action. Busy solving everyone else's problems, that's the trouble. One of the other troubles. There's a lot of those, too, a whole sea’s worth. He gets the overcoat off and it slides slurping to the floor to join the unfortunate scarf. Puddles are forming where they stand. He takes his shoes off—only polite—and then, stupidly, stands squarely in one of these wet patches in his white tube socks. Crowley watches him do it.

Watches him, also, _realize_ that he's done it and make a face that is part disappointment and part alarm and then just decide to forge on anyway, as of course he would. Whether Crowley would or no, always; no coward. The cracking feeling right through Crowley's middle is worse somehow now than two days ago when Aziraphale kissed him.

" _My_ darling," Aziraphale says. Having decided to forget the socks. "I'd just been—dead. Destroyed. More or less. _Every living thing_ was almost destroyed. I'd thought you were—I thought we were just relieved."

"And now?"

"Now I'm rather relieved to learn that's not the case. Though you've made it a bit difficult for me."

Sixty hundred years and then seven _worse_ years and now reprieve in a single searing sentence. As if this could be all it took.

Only: Aziraphale steps forward with an intent so clear, Crowley would have had to be the veriest innocent not to understand it. And he's _not_. One more time, and this time is going to be worse. One more time and then Crowley will be sent crawling back to Hell just on the faint hope that they really will end him at last. The first time, Crowley was something almost ecstatic, almost exalted, something all nerves and nerve-endings. Singing with the delight and the delicious fear of touching the one thing he'd thought could not be had. This time, the second time, he is nothing but baldly terrified.

And it could not have been more poorly placed, because while Crowley has only been busy trying to learn not to show that he's been broken clean in half, Aziraphale has instead caught him at being afraid. Which, frankly, is not much fucking better.

He touches Crowley carefully just next to his mouth, frowns at him with the most patient, divine compassion. Entirely unwelcome. "It's all right. No one but the two of us."

He'd fumbled it the first time, Aziraphale had. Been both eager and unpractised, and also—without fear of mistakes, so that he'd tried to do _everything_ to Crowley and the whole thing ended up a rush job. Well, he'd probably _read_ about the subject, so it figured. Crowley had wanted everything so badly at the same time, too, all of it also in a sudden rush like he'd just realized something enormous although the process of realizing had in fact gone on for centuries and although nothing was ever really a rush until it _really was one._ So Crowley hadn't bothered to correct things despite knowing better, and it had really been a fairly bad effort on both parts except for the _amount_ of effort _._ And then somehow in the process of not correcting it, it turned out to have been the effort that counted above everything else, and the wanting, and really the job itself hadn't mattered at all.

He mostly can't even remember the middle bits of it now. It's not the memory of the sex that's been driving him mad. Not how good it had felt. Not how _at last_ it had felt. It was just Aziraphale looking back at him with his whole attention, and having that whole attention be enormous, the size of millennia, and with it Aziraphale finally understanding exactly what Crowley himself had, some time ago, also finally understood.

Only, afterwards, Aziraphale had stretched his back out with a little satisfied noise like it'd only been dinner at a particularly good tapas place. Crowley had said, accidentally, "Thanks." And then without ever talking about it, they'd both never talked about it again except to call it an anomaly.

Yeah. Yeah, it's just them here, just the two of them in Crowley's own front hall. Crowley knows it, and he can't stop being afraid. Even now, even though Aziraphale is with him, even rescued in Aziraphale's steady arms. If it's just them, and no witnesses, and a tree falls in the forest—who's to say it ever happened, or how many times it happened, or whether it will happen ever again.

"Love," Aziraphale says. It’s a non sequitur, almost, except it gutters like a candle held next to the dynamite behind Crowley's fragile human breastbone, already dangerously cracked. He strokes Crowley's cheek with his knuckles.

Crowley has fangs, is the thing, and sometimes he _can't not have them_. And Aziraphale is an angel, and Aziraphale has asked not to see them. But even the dullest angel in the world, the stupidest damned soul, would notice that Crowley is coming over a bit snaky now, a bit not in control. And Aziraphale—isn't dull, he's not that. The way he's straying just the tips of his fingers into the back of Crowley's collar, into the fuzzy short bits at the back of his hair, isn't even stodgy. If it had been stodgy—

Crowley still would have wanted to die for it and then for not having it, but he might at least have found it embarrassing. Instead of something that is ripping him in half on the ethereal plane where it doesn't quite show yet. Except it might just show in how his teeth are coming out and it's probably the wings next; there was never even a hope about the eyes but at least he can _shut those_ —

 _"Crowley,"_ Aziraphale says, stern as only someone who is absolutely, self-righteously sure that he's right about everything all the time can possibly be. "Look at me."

So Crowley does.

This perhaps _is_ what it feels like, to be lifted up and saved. Borne up upon the face of the waters, as it were. And always at the last possible moment, of-fucking-course—the last second before the calamity, or it wouldn't count as a rescue at all. He's not very sure that it's been fucking worth it. He's not very sure that he really is safe.

"I'm sorry," Aziraphale says, "I'm sorry, I was wrong, but I've stopped it now." Ah, of course, and that's how it's done: you just _stop being wrong_. About everything. Perfect. "I didn't know what was making you... angry?"

Asks that last bit like a different question because he _knows_ he's still wrong, actually.

"Not angry. Aziraphale. I'm not angry, I'm—" dying. Sick unto death. A crawling thing that cannot bear to be looked at. Or— In love with you, you fucking imbecile, and if you leave me here like this in my own fucking flat I will _re-start_ Armageddon my own damned self, Christ, Adam, Saint Simeon on the Cross—don't—don't _do_ this if you cannot mean it. The only thing that prevents Crowley from spilling all of it out loud is that he _did_ do as Aziraphale had told him, he _always_ does, and so they're looking right into each other and he can see that Aziraphale has almost certainly heard it all anyway.

"Yes," Aziraphale says, and kisses him the third time that breaks the pattern. It's not a bible verse. They're instantly in water far, far over their heads.

It's a kindness, really, when Aziraphale pulls back and lets Crowley's knees fold. Keeps his steady hand at the back of Crowley's neck but just lets Crowley _go_. All right. All right, one more time then, because Crowley has never been anything but weak and irresolute. Crowley has never apologized for _anything_ and _will not start now_ and owes Aziraphale nothing in the first place but—but it's still, always, his bitten-back urge to kneel for him, sorry, sorry, _sorry_. Sorry for not being a very good angel when he was one, sorry for his suspicion that Aziraphale isn't such a very good angel now. Sorry for liking him the better for it, for wanting to gnaw on his edges and pull at his pinfeathers for _more_ of it.

But then, "Hang on," Aziraphale says, which _isn't yes_ , even though he _just said yes_ , when Crowley takes the vantage point that this gives him and leans into it. Crowley is fully intending to bury himself here, intending to taste what Aziraphale is torturing him with, the idea that _Crowley_ might be mistaken and this might be theirs to keep and to keep together. "Wait," Aziraphale says, sounding rushed, sounding flustered—he was flustered the first time around and he's always flustered when he knows he's made a stupid mistake—and falls with a thud to his own knees. So that they're still face to face.

"Angel. Are you an idiot." Crowley closes his eyes. Even though Aziraphale asked him not to.

"No, I'm," Aziraphale interrupts himself, and Crowley, and Crowley's whole monologue of self-pitying doubt, with a kiss so fast and so overheated that it can't have been premeditated, "I'm apologizing," he says. But he says it like he means, _I'm pushing you over backwards onto your own entryway floor and my socks are wet because I wasn't careful and I'm not being careful now._ And then, and then. He puts his sweet, uncertain mouth to Crowley's neck, puts his hands on Crowley's uncertain body.

A single, searing sentence.

He takes Crowley apart, body from soul, right there on the cold concrete.

"I'm sorry," Aziraphale whispers, breath he hasn't caught yet against the side of Crowley's face. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm staying." And he will, he will, he _means_ it, and Crowley lies on the floor and is saved.

It was Crowley who—who was meant to apologize, for sullying something that shouldn't have been sullied. For asking for something that Aziraphale couldn't give. But that doesn't seem, from this new perspective—really new, has he ever actually looked at the ceiling of his flat before? It's quite boring; surely something could be done—to be right. He doesn't want Aziraphale's apology, either, doesn't want anyone's. Maybe Hers. Maybe whoever's idea this whole apology business had been in the first place, adding in guilt where there should only ever have been a choice. But. But six thousand years and then seven more, and somehow there's still room for that choice: an angel and a demon lie together, very stupidly, on a parquet floor.


End file.
